Fruitful endeavors [from Canadian Packaging September 2012 issue]

Filling a void is something that comes naturally to folks running Fruition Manufacturing Limited—both figuratively and literally—because the company’s daily business depends on it. Established in 2005, it’s a sweet business indeed for the Oakville, Ont.-based custom manufacturer of fruit-based fillings, fondants, icings and various other toppings for foodservice customers in the baking, confectionery and dairy industries.

“We are an innovative manufacturer of fruit- and sugar-based filling products with a comprehensive line of recipes that will make any mouth water in delight,” Fruition plant manager Roland Love told Canadian Packaging on a recent visit to a busy, state-of-the-art, 30,000-square-foot facility—located about a 40-minute drive west of Toronto—operating under some of the food industry’s highest standards for product quality and safety, along with plant sanitation and hygiene.

Fruition manufactures and packages fruit-based fillings for baked goods customers.

Faithfully adhering to the AIB (American Institute of Baking)’s consolidated standards guidelines, the HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points)-certified facility also boasts kosher certification, Love points out, with the building’s 10,000-square-foot production and packaging area operating in a strictly-observed ‘nut-free’ production environment.

Custom Service
Being a key supplier of custom-made fillings to one of Canada’s largest national fast-food restaurant operators—boasting a popular and wide-ranging daily selection of freshly-made doughnuts—requires the Fruition plant to maintain a fast-paced production schedule, according to Love, to meet demanding production deadlines.

“We are a really busy company because we are involved in what is a very quick-turnaround business,” says Love, explaining the plant’s 24-hours-a-day, five-days-a-week, three-shift operation, including all required sanitation procedures.

Says Love: “We supply our main customer with fills—including raspberry, two types of strawberry, blueberry, caramel, lemon, cherry, chocolate, cinnamon, glaze, Venetian Boston Cream and a beverage base—we do so for their quick-service shops right across Canada.”

As the company’s production requirements and volumes grew over the years, Love relates, so did the need to automate many of the secondary packaging processes previously performed manually—for both safety and productivity reasons.

Integrated by MD Packaging, Fruition’s automated packaging line utilizes ABB’s IRB 360 FlexPicker delta robotic system outfitted with a Cognex machine vision system to quickly pick up and place two-kilogram plastic pouches of fruit fillings into cartons below at high speeds.

While the actual filling of the product into high-barrier plastic pouching was always expertly handled by the plant’s two highly-automated, hardworking Cryovac vertical flexible bag fillers manufactured by Sealed Air Corporation—the downstream manual handling of the two-kilogram, hot-to-touch pouches rapidly coming out of the fillers had some of the line’s production personnel handling as much as 1,000 kilograms of product per shift, Love recalls.

“We knew we had to automate eventually,” says Love, adding that the plant also needed to boost its productivity in order to remain a cost-competitive, flexible manufacturing operation.

“The whole packaging line was a very labor-intensive job area,” he recalls, noting that the packaging line’s cramped 5,000-square-foot floorspace presented a significant challenge for a sudden massive influx of automated equipment.

Or so it seemed, until Love contacted packaging equipment distributors and line integrators MD Packaging Inc. of Markham, Ont., in May of 2010, while looking to replace an existing, worn-out case-packing system.

After taking a close look at Fruition’s packaging line, MD Packaging suggested a number of ways it could obtain significant productivity improvements by automating its entire end-of-line packaging operations with one fully-integrated, turnkey line that would fit within the tight footprint.

Employing Wexxar’s WF30 case erector, the packaging line at Fruition came together as a joint project of JLS Automation and MD Packaging to help Fruition optimize the production line efficiency at the company’s Oakville plant.

“Being a really busy company, we are always appreciative when someone offers suggestions on how we could create efficiencies while being progressive,” Love relates, adding that he was very impressed with the new packaging line proposal put forth by MD Packaging sales and service representative Jaime Alboim.

“The main concern we always had about automating this part of our operations was the fact that we really have a very small amount of available floorspace,” Love recalls.

“But Jaime did a good job of convincing me that MD Packaging would provide us with the equipment we needed, and to fit it within the 5,000-square-foot confines.

“And in the end, they were true to their word,” says Love, complimenting Alboim for overseeing a smooth execution of the entire project—from conceptual design to equipment installation and startup—by December of 2011.

“The way this whole new automated line came together actually took us pleasantly by surprise,” he states. “It was a great way for us to forge a new partnership.”

Working on the project in partnership with York, Pa.-based packaging machinery supplier and integrator JLS Automation enabled MD Packaging to complete the entire project to full customer satisfaction, according to Alboim, while meeting all the pertinent Ontario occupational health-and-safety requirements.

“Given the space constraints we had to work with and the complexity of the automation required, this whole line fits into what MD Packaging and JLS call their ‘customer-centric’ approach to business,” says Alboim, relating that every detail and each step of the project was carefully thought out and discussed with Fruition to ensure everybody was on the same page at all times.

“There are always a few unexpected hiccups in any project, but working with Fruition was a truly great experience because we really worked as partners,” Alboim confides.

Part of Fruition’s end-of-line packaging solution, an ABB palletizing robot neatly stacks product cases pre-programmed layer pattern.

Walk Away
“We always want to walk away from a project knowing that we did everything we could—from design to startup—to live up to both the customers’ and our own expectations,” he reflects.

According to Alboim, MD Packaging supplied about 80 per cent of the equipment required for the line from JLS Automation.

Recalls Alboim: “JLS took the lead on designing and implementation, and MD Packaging took care of the additional 20 per cent of the equipment, while remaining the focal contact with Fruition throughout the entire project.”

The equipment MD Packaging sold and installed on the line includes:

• two M-Series plus print-and-apply labelers from Domino Printing Solutions;
• a Wexxar Packaging WF30 case erector with an extended infeed and stainless steel enviroguard package;
• a Wexxar Belcor 250SS case-sealer;
• two Mettler-Toledo High-Speed Beltweigh XS Combi checkweighers, used to verify the weight of filled bags coming out of the Cryovac fillers;
• one Mettler-Toledo S3600XE checkweigher combined with a Cognex vision system, used to verify barcodes and the presence of a label.

The Cognex vision system changes the parameters in the case weight on-the-fly, with product information ensuring that not only the appropriate weight settings are used for different case weights, but that all statistics are also captured for the individual product SKUs (stock-keeping units).

In addition to all of this data, the case-weigher also checks for open minor and major flaps through special software that Mettler-Toledo developed along with an array of product sensors. All of this captured data is sent to a central reject system if anything is off.

Alboim believes that this particular system is very unique in the market, and something that sets Mettler-Toledo High Speed apart from other inspection equipment manufacturers.

Heavy-duty SEW-Eurodrive motors power the conveyor belts used for smooth transport of Fruition’s product through all the packaging line stages.

“Those are all lines that we (MD Packaging) sell and support locally, so it made sense to use our locally-trained technicians to do that,” says Alboim, adding that MD Packaging also provides full local after-sales support, including replacement parts and  preventative maintenance service.

Metal Heads
MD Packaging also redeployed two existing Thermo Scientific APEX 500 metal detection units Fruition had been using as stand-alone systems, mounting them onto the two Beltweigh XS checkweighers to help save on the line’s floorspace.

Equipment supplied by JLS Packaging through MD Packaging and installed by JLS includes: a dual JLS Osprey case-packing cell with two ABB model IRB 360 FlexPicker second-generation delta robots, which pick up individual pouches of Fruition’s filling and place them at high speeds into cases.

Featuring Rockwell Automation’s Allen-Bradley PanelView 1000 HMI (human-machine interface) all the vision, material handling and  transferring equipment, this line also boasts a fully-automatic palletizing cell, comprising an automatic pallet dispenser, a Lantech automatic stretchwrapper, and an ABB model IRB 660 palletizing robot with a PanelView 1000 HMI terminal.

Alboim says the JLS Osprey case-packing cells utilize vision-based technology for tracking of both the product and the cases—allowing for very fast changeover and agility by bypassing the need for mechanical flights or accumulation for picking.

“We can effectively increase efficiency on the cells by picking on angles in random positions and loading dynamically through the index,” Alboim explains.

Working with one of their other strategic partners, JLS also supplied the conveyance lines that join all of the equipment together.

A Mettler Toledo Hi-Speed checkweigher ensures proper weight of each pouch of fruit filling.

The conveyors are powered by strategically positioned SEW-Eurodrive motors to ensure even transfer along the packaging line.

Says Alboim: “Each conveyor is controlled and synched to the PLC (programmable logic controller) independently, and each has its own VFD (variable frequency drive) so that we can tweak the infeed discharge to create gaps between the pouches on the conveyor, and adjust performance accordingly.”

The entire line was also built with stainless-steel conduit to facilitate easy assembly and for sanitary purposes.

While Love thinks that JLS and MD Packaging did a great job on the packaging line, he also gives praise to Falls Electric of Niagara Falls, Ont., which “did a lot of wiring in our facility for the line to operate properly—and did so quickly and effectively.”

The Osprey case-packers were the first part of the line to be installed—quickly followed by the palletizing side—but Love says that the whole project was all about collaboration.

“We believe that collaboration is the cornerstone to any successful implementation, and we did not want to compromise that feeling.”

Alboim agrees: “For us, Fruition represents over a year of collaboration prior to purchase in trying to understand their requirements—both existing and future—and designing a system agile enough to accommodate both.”

Busy Year
While every step in the project created its own challenges, Fruition worked well with both MD and JLS to resolve issues without compromising the initial intention of MD Packaging, which was to provide an automated line that would take Fruition further than expected in production capabilities for years to come.

And so far, it has worked.

Domino’s M-Series Plus print-and-apply system attaching product labels to the panel of each Fruition shipping carton.

Love notes that while the filling speed remains the same, along with saving line workers some serious lifting, Fruition has seen the same jobs completed in eight hours, compared to 10 with the manual packing.

“We created a safer work environment, but we also have increased our throughput, meaning we can now handle larger orders from our customer base, which they are taking advantage of,” states Love.

Love also credited his employees for their dedication to performing at a high level to make the switch to an automated packaging line virtually seamless.

A Festo servomotor incorporated into the design of Wexxar’s WF 30 case erector installed on the new packaging line.

Alboim agrees: “The people at Fruition are among the most dedicated I’ve seen—always rising to the task and always willing to do what it takes to get the job done.

“Introducing automation like this into a facility takes a great deal of willingness from people to dive in and help when it’s needed, and the people of Fruition made the transition very easy.”

A Wexxar Belcor 250SS case sealer uses an adhesive tape to close cartons of Fruition product.

Adds Love: “I think it helps a great deal that Fruition has a very engaged staff of people committed to quality, which is important not only to us, but also to them because everyone eats the product as consumers.

We know that if we continue to put out a safe, quality product, we will continue our impressive growth well into the future,” Love sums up.

“Our new packaging line from MD and JLS has been a great addition to our already existing high company ideals.”